Do you have a domain name? No? Get one right now.

That’s right. Now. I’ll wait.

What’s that? You don’t have a website up yet? You don’t know what your domain name should be? You already have an idea for a domain name but you want to wait a little while longer before you get a domain name?

All nonsense. All of it.

Here’s why….

1. You don’t need to have a website in order to get a domain name- However you will need a domain name if you’re going to build a website…and the sooner you get a domain name the better.

2. If you don’t know what your domain should be…start with your own name- Go out and register your name. If your name is John Leathermaker, then register johnleathermaker.com. The idea is to start getting your name out there on the web and registering the name that everyone knows you as is a good start. Plus…do you have a company name? Does everyone know you as John’s Handcrafted Belts? Register that too…johnshandcraftedbelts.com. And yes, it is possible to have more than one domain name…you can simply point both domains to the same website. Customers that don’t know your website address will probably just guess and type in your name when they do a search for you or your business name. If your website address has your name or your business name (or better still if you own both names), they will be more likely to find you.

3. Remember that a domain name is really a piece of digital real estate- Did you know that someone paid $180,000 for the domain name Offer.com? Or $110,000 for AutoClassifieds.com? Why would someone pay so much just for a web address? Because a good domain helps identify you. A good domain name brands you. A good domain name helps people to find you on the Internet. And a good domain name can get disappear pretty fast. It’s easier to remember Offer.com than Theworldsbestoffer.com

I had a friend who came up with the perfect domain name for a website that he was planning to build. He checked to make sure that the name was available and it was. What did he do? He waited. He told me, “Well, I’m not quite ready to make a website yet…I’ll get it when I’m ready to start on my website”. Guess what happened? When he was finally ready to start his website a couple months later, the domain name was gone. Someone else bought it two weeks after he checked the availability.

If you’ve come up with the perfect domain name for your website, chances are that someone else has or will come up with the same idea. Who’s going to own that domain? The first person that buys it. And once it’s bought, it stays bought until the owner sells it or lets the registration expire. Domain names that end with a .com are at a premium because when it comes to web addresses, everyone naturally thinks of “.com”. Sure you can settle with yourname.net or yourname.org or even yourname.biz…but rest assured that most people are going to head over to yourname.com first.

4. Search engines reward longevity- If you ever do a search for something on Google, you’ll notice that many of the websites that come up first in the search engine results have been around for 2, 3, or maybe even 10 years. Search engines like Google tends to give preference when it comes to listing websites on search engine results to websites that’s been around for a while. So even if you aren’t planning on building a website for a while, it can benefit you to buy your domain name as soon as possible. If you have a blog on Blogger or Typepad, you can hook your domain name up to your blog. Heck, you can even point your domain name to a blank page that says “Coming Soon!”. The important thing is that it doesn’t benefit you to wait.

5. Domain names are a cheap form of branding- A nice logo can set you back a couple hundred bucks. Business cards…maybe anywhere from $20 to $50. Full color postcards? About a $100. A domain name? If it’s available…about $10 or less. I’m pretty sure you can spare $10 (maybe less) to secure your own domain name.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t know how to register a domain name? No problem….watch the video below.

Just a quick announcement. Every month I do telephone workshops with an Information Marketers group on various web-related issues. Last month I did a call about “How to Market Your Website Offline“. I’ve just made the audio of this call available as an MP3 download for all of my newsletter subscribers. Here is an excerpt:

 

 How to Market Your Website Offline [2:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

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If you’re interested in hearing the rest of the audio, you can click here to subscribe my free newsletter. You’ll receive the link to the rest of the call along with this week’s newsletter article on “How to Use Social Networks to Market Yourself“.

One thing that attracts people to your art blog or your craft website is to have something…maybe a feature, a photo, or style that makes people stop and say wow! It doesn’t have to be big, just something different, memorable, and makes you stand out from everyone else.

One example of this is a tutorial series on stranded knitting done by knitter Jen Nashville on her blog 144 Inches of I-Cord. I’ve seen tons of tutorials on websites and blogs, but hers was on the few that made be stop and say “Wow! That’s really cool!”

Instead of the usual series of pictures, she turned her tutorial into an eyecatching comic book image that compelled me to visit her site and see more. How cool would an entire comic book of knitting techniques would be? It would certainly stand out from all the other books on knitting out there.

Superstar marketer Seth Godin calls this something that makes you stand out a “purple cow”. You see tons of black and white or white and brown cows in a field and don’t think to stop…but a purple cow will stop you in your tracks and make you go wow. He even demonstrated this when marketing his book “The Purple Cow” by distributing his first book run in limited edition customized milk cartoons. Seth and his book made the phrase “purple cow” part of the marketing dictionary.

So our job when it comes to promoting our website, our work, and ourselves to find our “purple cow”. As artists we’re already “purple cows” in the eyes of the public, so how to we portray that so people stop and say wow? What is it about your art that makes you different from other artists in the same medium? How does your craft make you different from other artists in general? What can people get from your website that they can’t get from the billions of other pages on the Internet? How will your booth stand out from the sea of white canopies at the big art fair?

How to Find Your Purple Cow:

1. Take a look around and see what’s out there. Don’t be confined to looking for the latest design or hottest style. Look at how people are doing the most ordinary things. A tutorial on a knitting technique isn’t remarkable…but one written like a comic book is.
2. Figure out how you can be different from everyone else. Everyone is different in some way…what’s your one thing that makes you different from everyone else?
3. Don’t be afraid to take a good idea and make it your own. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you need to create something totally original…if you see a great idea that would apply to you, take the parts that would work and make it your own.
4. Don’t confine yourself to the art and craft world. Some of the best ideas come from combining two totally different disciplines.
5. Read Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. As a bonus, you should also subscribe to his blog for a daily stream of stand-out goodness.
6. Read more in general. Some of the most creative people are insatiable readers…and the read on a wide variety of topics.

Thanks to Craftzine for the link to Jen’s blog!

My husband works in the career services office at a local state university and one thing that he tells his soon-to-be graduating students is when they include an email address on their resume is that it shouldn’t be something like iluvtobedrunk@yahoo.com.

A couple days ago I wrote about creating the right context for your work on your website. That also includes your email address. While a cute or risqué email address like thenextparishilton@gmail.com can seem clever for your personal email, it can send the wrong message to customers, galleries, and anyone else you’ll be contacting for your business.

Productivity 501 has a nice little post called Setup Your Email to Look Professional, which provides 8 tips on ways to set up your business email. You can check it out at:
http://www.productivity501.com/setup-your-email-to-look-professional/262/

What kind of context are you creating for your work on the web? What does creating a context mean and why does it matter?

If you are a classical music lover, you may have heard about the interesting experiment that world class violinist Joshua Bell did a while back. According to a Washington Post article, this was an experiment to see if the brilliance of his musical talent would cut through the hustle and bustle of the Washington D.C. rush hour at the Metro. Joshua was wearing jeans, a long sleeved T-shirt, and a baseball cap, and threw a few dollars in his open violin case. He then spent the next 43 minutes playing six classical pieces (starting with Bach’s “Chaconne” which is, I understand, one of the most difficult and exhausting violin pieces to play well). About 1,097 people passed by during the performance (this was in L’Enfant Plaza in downtown Washington DC). So how did one of the best musicians in the world, playing a violin worth about 3.5 million, whose concerts where a “pretty good” seat could set you back at $100 or more do at this impromptu concert?

He got a total of $32.17…not including the money that he put in himself at the beginning.

You could quickly come to the conclusion that the average person has no appreciation for music. You could come to the conclusion that we as a society are becoming a nation of classless boors whose idea of great music stops at American Idol. You could also come to the conclusion that we’re so busy and rushed these days that we can’t even stop to listen to the beauty of some of the greatest music even composed played by one of the best musicians in the world.

I’d say that those conclusions played a big role in this experiment.

But I’d argue that something else was perhaps playing a pretty significant role. Another conclusion is that it was just the wrong context.

Would you expect to see a violinist of Bell’s caliber playing in the local Metro station like an average street performer? Would you expect to see an original Warhol or glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly for sale at your local diner? And if you did, how would you react? With confusion? With skepticism?

It’s basic human behavior to look for context or clues on how to react to something. A sculpture on display on a deserted street corner will get a very different reaction if it was located in the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art. No matter who created it…no matter how technically good it was. A recent Stanford University study showed that pre-schoolers preferred the taste of foods that came wrapped in McDonald’s packaging to unpackaged foods…even if the food where identical or if they were tasting food that McDonald’s don’t even sell, like carrots.

No matter what you might think about McDonald’s or the power of marketing, it’s a fact that outside information like marketing, location, and other things that have nothing to do with an artist’s talent can influence how people see your work.

So what does all of this have to do with your website? It’s just that context means a lot, especially on the web. Remember that on the web, the only context you give people is the one you create. Everything from the design of your site, your domain name, and your email address, to the copy on your site, the images, and how reliable and fast your site is creates a context for your visitor on how to view your work. The great thing about the web is that unlike physical galleries or art shows, you are in control of almost everything that your visitors will see and experience. Almost…remember that there are things about the web that are beyond our control. But in comparison to other venues, you have a heck of a lot of control.

So take a good long look at your website and everything associated with it. What kind of context have you created for your work?